One of the deadliest climate events in the US, Hurricane Katrina inflicted a devastating and uneven toll along the Gulf Coast: More than two-thirds of the estimated 1,330 people killed in hard-hit Louisiana were over the age of 60.

The 2005 storm wasn’t an anomaly. In disaster after disaster, older adults have made up the majority of death tolls. They accounted for three-quarters of deaths in Washington state during the 2021 heat wave in the Pacific Northwest, and more recently, more than two-thirds of casualties during Hurricane Ian in Florida. Perhaps most infamously: All but 96 of the more than 739 Chicagoans who perished in that city’s deadly 1995 heat wave were age 60 and over.